Xerox and IT Management :: essays research papers

Xerox is one of the largest companies in the document processing products and go industry. Xerox held a virtual monopoly in the plain-paper duplicator market until the Federal Trade Commission intervened. In 1975 Xerox was forced to forfeit patent egis and had to license to competitors. Xeroxs markets share dipped from 80% in 1976 to 13% in 1982. In order to become more competitive, Xerox began to physical exertion benchmarking, Leadership through Quality and employee involvement initiatives. These initiatives helped grow Xeroxs market share back to 18% in the low end copier business and 35% in the mid-to-high end. Despite the improvements in market share the financial performance of the company declined. Therefore in 1992 a major shakeup was planned, Xerox would change from a geographic organization to a market segment organization.Xerox corporate information management (CIM) unit was established in the early 1970s. In 1987, CIM was moved to the General Services Division and wa s given the task to Provide the overall information technology leadership to the company. The leader of the CIM group quickly realized the task was not possible without significant organizational change. After bringing in consultants to review the Information Management at Xerox, the coach of CIM realized the Xerox IM infrastructure could not support the companys strategic direction. To address the IM problems, CIM started a new initiative, IM 2000. The goal of IM 2000 was to move Xerox to a new information systems infrastructure. The problems found with Information Management at XeroxAging application portfolio built on proprietary technologiesLarge cost associated with charge legacy system runningDuplicate work caused by corporate enculturation autonomyThe IM 2000 design team recommended the following four strategies1.Reduce/ direct&61607Reduce overall costs by reining in the expense of legacy system. Use savings to fund new applications and infrastructure.2.Infrastructure Ma nagement&61607Move to a industry standard infrastructure that would be managed centrally a client server environment.3.Leverage worldwide IM resources&61607Create library of shareable core modules.4.Business process-driven solutions&61607The actual legacy system was to be replaced by solutions supporting new Xerox business process.Xeroxs earlier quality initiatives had created a corporate culture used to having a partner relationship with suppliers. Because of this, management suggested IM should look at outsourcing as an alternative. Typical Reasons for OutsourcingConcerns about Cost and QualityoVendors save gold by&61607Running much leaner overhead structures than their customers&61607More aggressive use of low cost labor pools (India)&61607Staff must keep up to date on newest IT practices&61607Purchasing Power&61607More efficient use of capacity